Being Overly Optimistic

Brad Antle, CEO of Salient Federal Solutions, an engineering and IT services firm

When I was leading a public company, I allowed myself to buy into revenue projections that were overly optimistic. Ensuing delays in getting production online and up to full capacity for a new program had significant impacts on our ability to meet revenue and profit projections. Compounding those headwinds, we were experiencing unanticipated delays in another new start. This required a detailed, painstaking, bottoms-up review of all revenue projections and a much more conservative view of these two programs. Words of wisdom given to me: Don’t miss guidance! If you do miss guidance, don’t do it twice!